I thought you had eyes, Steve, and (in your opinion) a brain, even if what you think is a brain is actually your scrotum (which just happens to superficially resemble a brain, even though - in your case - it has not received those items which have yet to descend). Look at Keith's postings in his idea of KK, with all the Zs.

gokyreloaded said:
What do you care Truru, and have you seen it?, If so what changes are you talking about ??,

Even though I don't agree with certain aspects of KK, I am still interested in the latest developments of any of the Cornish orthographies. This is in contrast to KK extremists who don't care about anything that isn't KK.

I am talking about the z's Keith is adding to his Cornish writing because he thinks KK still looks too English. And then he complains that the language is seen as "made up". Surely even you must be able to see the hypocrisy there Gokky!

truru said:
[quote=gokyreloaded]What do you care Truru, and have you seen it?, If so what changes are you talking about ??,

Even though I don't agree with certain aspects of KK, I am still interested in the latest developments of any of the Cornish orthographies. This is in contrast to KK extremists who don't care about anything that isn't KK.

I am talking about the z's Keith is adding to his Cornish writing because he thinks KK still looks too English. And then he complains that the language is seen as "made up". Surely even you must be able to see the hypocrisy there Gokky![/quote]

You are jumping to conclusions again, Truru.

If you had been paying attention you would have realised that it is nothing whatsoever to do with making Kernewek Kemmyn look even less like English.

The z's are because that's what the sound is.

So people who might otherwise make a horrible un-Cornish mess of words like will realise that is pronounced , even if they have never heard of the Welsh and Breton cognates and (or is that a Dutch cheese?).

So ordinary Cornish people like you will find it even easier to pronounce Cornish properly without having to learn linguistics first and to keep looking at what happens in Welsh and Breton for guidance. I take it that you would like to learn Cornish some day?

I think adding z's to Kernewek Kemmyn where appropriate is an excellent idea.

The easier the language can be made to learn the better - and having an unambiguous and easy to learn spelling system is the best basis for that.

bolster said:
If you had been paying attention you would have realised that it is nothing whatsoever to do with making Kernewek Kemmyn look even less like English.

I was paying attention when Keith said "Cornish is quite different from English, surely it's good propaganda to make it look as different as possible, to drive home the point that Cornwall is a separate nation with it's own separate language, not just "naughty English"." The reason Keith likes the z's is because he likes using false constructions based on his anti-English sentiment.

bolster said:
So ordinary Cornish people like you will find it even easier to pronounce Cornish properly without having to learn linguistics first and to keep looking at what happens in Welsh and Breton for guidance. I take it that you would like to learn Cornish some day?

Now who's jumping to conclusions? I am learning Cornish thanks and I'm doing just fine with the current KK material I have to use. The problem with people like you is that you assume "ordinary Cornish people" are too thick to understand that sometimes a letter doesn't represent a sound accurately, even though we encounter and understand that problem every day of our lives with English. I would much rather have a Cornish that sticks to attested forms as closely as is reasonable, and occasionally make pronounciation mistakes, rather than a dumbed-down conlang that's built on constructions based on anti-English sentiment or the arrogant assumption that people will be too thick to understand attested forms. An example: what possible benefit for the student does changing "qw" to "kw" have? Nobody has provided a sufficient answer to me for that yet.

bolster said:
The z's are because that's what the sound is.
So people who might otherwise make a horrible un-Cornish mess of words like will realise that is pronounced , even if they have never heard of the Welsh and Breton cognates and (or is that a Dutch cheese?).

Who would make a "horrible un-Cornish mess" of but not of ? Really, the biggest mess I can think of is that someone would pronounce it with the English "long o" diphthong instead of a simple monophthong /O/, but that's liable to happen regardless of whether you write or . Pronouncing with an /s/ sound instead of a /z/ sound is less egregious to my ear than using English vowels.

I have no problem with introducing into KK where the sound is /z/, but I find your reasoning here a bit off.

Evertype said:
There's a new dictionary coming out. We hear that it is about a ream thick. Will it implement a spelling reform? Who can tell? Keith suggests that it will.

The size and appearance of a dictionary of course depends to a large extent on the choices made with regard to typeface, print size(s), layout of entries, types of information included, use of abbreviations and codes etc. etc. as you well know. I have given my opinion on some of these matters with examples. Unfortunately with its present bunker mentality the Kesva is difficult to persuade. Having been battered by your often silly criticisms, they now react negatively to any criticism, even helpful and justified criticism, from me as much as from yourself. Just a few lines of criticism here against the Kesva was enough to make my position on that body untenable.

marhak said:
I thought you had eyes, Steve, and (in your opinion) a brain, even if what you think is a brain is actually your scrotum (which just happens to superficially resemble a brain, even though - in your case - it has not received those items which have yet to descend). Look at Keith's postings in his idea of KK, with all the Zs.

I've been writing Cornish like that for years. It does appear that the mainstream is slowly catching up with me. However unlike some people, I have no desire to force my ideas on others. When something I've discovered, like the 'God' words, is taken up, that's very gratifying, since it suggests that I've probably got something right.

If you could get things right, i.e., present logical arguments backed by data, then I imagine you'd find they be accepted too. With no ranting and raving required.

Evertype said:
wosa occurs at least 26 times in the corpus.
woja occurs at least 5 times in the corpus, along with ouga, ụdzha, b]oụdzha, and b]ugge.

woza occurs 0 times in the corpus.

Don't you bloody go and say that wosa is "un-Cornish".

I also think adding z's to Kernowek Kebmyn where appropriate is an excellent idea. Helps to knock yet another hole in the hull of a sinking ship.

The reason for distinguishing between /s/ and /z/ are exactly the same as for distinguishing /T/ and /D/. The latter are distinguished, even by Nance, by using the invented grapheme dh. Used by Lhuyd, but he wrote everything in his 'General Alphabet' based on experimental Welsh spellings of his day. It was never specific to Cornish, any more so than a modern linguist's IPA transcription. Anyway it's fairly clear now that /s/ and /z/ were distinct, although there are still a few undecided cases (and the distinction was neutralised finally in unstressed syllables). /z/ of course mostly came from OC /d/ and palatalised to a greater of lesser extent before front vowels to [Z] in MC which /s/ never seems to have done, and in LC this seems to have merged into j /dZ/ (when palatal) or /s/ (as [z]) where not. There was some interchange between /s/ and /z/ but it was very rare, just a half-dozen or so words that 'jumped the tracks'. So we've got /s/ and /z/. Seems logical to write them s and z? Any better suggestions?

It's worth pointing out that the scribes didn't distinguish /s/ from /z/ or /T/ from /D/ simply because the English-based system they'd learned had no 'machinery' for doing so. Both pairs of sounds are almost predictable in English, even in Modern English, so there is no need to distinguish them. This is not true for Cornish.

Truru : Actually I didn't much like z's to begin with, but over time I've come to see their utility. How else to make the distinction? "ss" vs "s"? "s" vs "cs"? Some fancy diacritic(s) from Ruritania?

And I did very carefully and as simply as possible explain the reasons for "kw" and "hw", some time ago. Clearly you weren't paying attention.

You are "forced to use" KK materials. Why? Probably because the other groups don't produce anything that's much use?

Not anti-English for the sake of it, although if that appeals to some people, so much the better. But it's really a question of respecting Cornish as it's own language, not just "funny English". If it's its own language, then it needs and deserves it own 'clothing', not some ill-fitting hand-me-down from Big Brother.

morvran said:
Truru : Actually I didn't much like z's to begin with, but over time I've come to see their utility. How else to make the distinction? "ss" vs "s"? "s" vs "cs"? Some fancy diacritic(s) from Ruritania?

How about not assuming language students are too thick to learn the distinction the same way every KK user has done over the past 23 years?

morvran said:
And I did very carefully and as simply as possible explain the reasons for "kw" and "hw", some time ago. Clearly you weren't paying attention.

Clearly I was, you assumed students would be too thick to understand again, this time about different rules in the mutation system. You also made the argument yet again that they shouldn't be there because they're too English: "The first comes from Latin through French into English, and the second is perculiarly English, only found in languages like Cornish, Manx (and Maori!) that have aped English practice." I still don't consider it reason enough for change. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be too stubborn to say "OK I can see your point" if I found myself agreeing with you, but it just hasn't happened yet.

morvran said:
You are "forced to use" KK materials. Why? Probably because the other groups don't produce anything that's much use?

Yup, although the correct quote is "have to use". Why else would I use KK material?

morvran said:
Not anti-English for the sake of it, although if that appeals to some people, so much the better. But it's really a question of respecting Cornish as it's own language, not just "funny English". If it's its own language, then it needs and deserves it own 'clothing', not some ill-fitting hand-me-down from Big Brother.

That's merely one person's opinion: yours. You are the only person I've come across who thinks Cornish looks too much like English, and that Cornish could be mistaken for badly spelled English. And your last sentence looks very much anti-English "for the sake of it", as does one of your previous posts saying: "So we're actually being more true to the genius of the Cornish language writing 'hw' than by just copying English 'wh'." Who are you/we to decide what is and isn't proper Cornish? If we don't keep to what was written in traditional Cornish as closely as is reasonable, how can we shake off the conlang image you say people have? When does reform after reform based on what we think Cornish should have looked like instead of what it did look like mean that we're not actually writing Cornish anymore? Where does it end? As I've said before most languages could be reformed into a series of grunts if we went back far enough, and as I've also said before we're supposed to be reviving Cornish not constructing a new language and just calling it Cornish.